


The Split

by ifinkufreaky



Series: Hard as Beskar [1]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Choking, Cockwarming, Death Threats, Deepthroating, Dom/sub, F/M, Fighting As Foreplay, Naked Female Clothed Male, Rope Bondage, Rough Sex, Sensory Deprivation, Spanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:01:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22362250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifinkufreaky/pseuds/ifinkufreaky
Summary: The Reader is a fellow Nevarran bounty hunter, working with the Mandalorian to find a quarry and split the reward. They keep renegotiating the terms of the split, and as passions rise, other interests come to the surface as well. She's afraid at first to reveal her desires, but Mando gives her just exactly what she needs. Set prior to Chapter One.
Relationships: The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)/Reader, The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)/You
Series: Hard as Beskar [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1609708
Comments: 59
Kudos: 472
Collections: The Mandalorian





	1. Chapter 1

There’s one thing you can appreciate about working with the Mandalorian: he sure knows how to be terrifying to his quarry. It’s not about bluster with him, or wild threats that can make a hunter seem unhinged; it’s in his sheer _presence._ He’s caught up to the quarry you’ve been tracking together, and now he looms over his prey like he’s inevitable.

‘Course, you’d never let him know he even made you shiver. “Enough with the dramatics,” you say to him, coming up behind the cowering bounty and yanking her arms together behind her back. “I’m the one that got her blaster out of her hand, and that’s the hardest part. Once they’re disarmed it’s all over. That ups my cut to 70%.”

A frustrated little hiss emanates from your business partner. He points that looming mask more squarely at you. “Fifty-five was what we agreed,” he says, words clipped. “And that was only because you had the specific location—”

“Without which your schedule wouldn’t have been worth shit,” you finish for him, pressing the binder around your quarry’s wrists. At least, the metal cuff clicks shut around one of them…

Suddenly the woman is whirling around, slamming the solid metal of the binder, hanging off just one wrist, right into your stomach.

You try to grab her but the momentum is not in your favor, especially with the wind knocked squarely out of your gut. You brace your hands on your knees, willing yourself not to fall completely down as you fight the pain, not in front of Mando, and manage to suck in a decent breath as you look up with involuntary tears forming in the corners of your eyes.

Just in time to see the Mandalorian grab the woman by the throat, stopping her escape in its tracks. He shoves her to her knees, bristling with frank irritation, and presses the muzzle of his blaster to the side of her skull. “Stay down.”

You stagger one step in their direction. Your gut hurts just about as much as your pride.

You can’t see a smirk on that cold metal face, but you know there has to be one as he looks over at you. “What were you saying about the hard part of the job being over? I’ll take that seventy.”

“This gets you _maybe_ an extra five,” you wheeze, stomping to the quarry kneeling at his feet and jamming her other hand into the binder where it belongs. “And you’re forgetting that I was the one that noticed her sneaking out that hatch in the back.”

Another one of his annoying silences follows, the one where he stands so still and makes you wait, just guessing what thoughts might be bouncing around inside the helmet. “And she’s going back in _my_ ship. My fuel, my carbonite. I’ll take sixty.”

You huff.

“You’re the one that started this. I would have been fine with the original agreement.”

You roll your eyes. “We’ll talk about it after she’s loaded in.”

“Up,” the Mandalorian barks at the quarry, digging those orange-tipped fingers into the cloth covering her shoulder and hauling her to her feet.

The woman complies, looking defeated, and you all start walking across the plateau toward where the _Razor Crest_ has been hidden. Mando’s been in the game too long to pay docking fees at an official spaceport on a planet so chaotic that you can get away without.

Soon enough, the quarry says what everyone with a price on their head says, once the binders are tight around their wrists. “You know, you two really don’t have to worry about your split. Just let me get back to my guys, I can pay you each as much as that whole price on my head.”

You snort. “If that were true, we wouldn’t have found you working in such a shit-hole. No way the syndicate values you that much.”

“I seem to recall a story about you taking up a quarry on an offer like that once,” Mando’s modulator emits at you. He slows his pace so he can see your face as the three of you trudge across the uneven ground. “Didn’t it end with another Guild member finding you stripped and tied up in a cellar? That would have been a sight to see.”

“I heard that story too,” you shoot back. “Wasn’t me. But if you want to see me like that, Mando, maybe you can try to play your cards right a little later…” you force your mouth to close. Not the most well-thought-out comeback. Nor the kind of thing to say if you want a fellow Hunter’s respect. Which you do. It’s just that there’s something about the Mandalorian that’s damned enticing, that makes you wonder if he ever loosens up even a little, lets anyone touch the warm body that’s gotta be somewhere underneath all that armor.

“I know a good hotel in the East Quarter,” the quarry pipes up before Mando gives you a response, “soft mattresses, and real good soundproofing in the walls. Maybe you two need to work out some of this sexual tension before taking me back to the ship? You can just stick me in another room until you’re done.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you’d just twiddle your thumbs and wait real nice for us.” You stick your blaster into her ribs and prod her to move faster, just for being annoying. “Sweet of you to be so generous, but don’t worry. He and I’ll have plenty of privacy while you’re stashed away in carbonite for the ride to Nevarro.”

The Mandalorian’s helmet turns toward you sharply.

“What? It’s not that I don’t trust you, Mando, but I always collect in-person. I’m riding with you.”

Mando’s ship is a real bare-bones operation; it’s not much more than a cargo hold and a cockpit. It’s almost enough to make you regret insisting on coming along. You can’t find a spot to get comfortable in, and there’s nothing to _do._ Mando’s not helping; he’s been sitting at the controls of the ship, back perfectly straight, since take-off. The course has already been set; the eerie lines of hyperspace are streaking by, and there’s nothing in this cockpit that actually requires his attention unless something goes wrong.

“So… what do you usually do while you’re in hyperspace?” you finally ask, slouching against the cockpit wall.

Mando’s hands turn palm up. “This.”

“You serious?”

He shrugs. “Good time to meditate.”

You look out at the rushing stars. “You have got to be kidding me. I’d go completely crazy in about five minutes.”

“You probably would,” he says. So calm, so matter-of-fact.

You look down at him sharply. He hasn’t moved a muscle, though he could be looking at you sideways through his visor and you’d never know. Infuriating. You plop down into the seat behind him. “You don’t think I’m capable of being quiet?”

“I’ve never known you to be.”

You flip your hair. “Some of us have a thing called ‘people skills.’ But it doesn’t look like they cover that in Mandalorian school.”

Now he turns his face toward yours. “Is that what you think you have.”

You nod, stifling the quick words that heat up your tongue so you can prove how quiet you can be.

“I’ve seen you try to get free drinks from soldiers that haven’t had shore leave in months, and still not be able to seal the deal.”

Mando? Teasing you? That’s new. You scoff at the accusation. “You just left too early. You would have seen where that night went. Try loosening up a little sometimes.”

Another silence. Then he swivels away from you, back to his perfect posture. “No thanks.”

“What are you jealous?”

The stack of armor in the pilot’s seat gives you no reaction at all.

You exhale loudly. “You know, I always thought you must have had some other kind of life to go back to, the way you drop those pucks off with Karga and never stick around.” You glance down the ladder at the empty cargo hatch, thinking of the junky little cot you saw crammed into a closet down there. “But you really live like this? Nothing but work for you, huh. Is that what it takes to be the best hunter in the sector?”

His helmet moves a fraction in your direction. “At least you can admit it.”

Your face gets hot. You did not mean to give that to him. “ _Some_ people say that about you.” You cross your arms, trying to get more comfortable by throwing your feet up on the control panel to his left.

He rolls his neck, beskar facing pointedly at your feet until you huff and move them.

Your frustration cracks into all-out mockery. “Ooh,” you blurt out in a sing-song voice, “I’m Mando, when I’m not hunting I sit perfectly straight and stare into space; my capture rate is near-perfect because I never sleep and guns are my religion.”

His helmet tilts above his metal-encased shoulder, dangerously close to actually looking at you again. “If you’re going to keep running your mouth like that, I can think of a few ways to make you shut up.”

It takes you a moment to recover from the rush that shoots through your body, a confusing mix of adrenaline and frank arousal as he speaks to you with the tone he usually reserves for quarries. Then you bark out a laugh. “Mando! Did you just make a dirty joke?”

Slowly he swivels the chair toward you, until he’s facing you squarely with his legs spread and fists on his knees. “I suppose you could take it that way.”

And then he just sits there, staring at you, as you decide which way to take it. Was he trying to say he hadn’t meant it as a come-on? That you’re the only one here with a dirty mind, that immediately imagined him shoving his cock down your throat? Fuck. Or does he want you to take it that way, to climb into his lap and sit your ass down on the battered metal plate covering his thigh…

You have to shake your head a little to make the thoughts stop. That is so not what he means. “You’re just mad that we make a great team,” you say, standing up and grinning, trying a new tactic. “That after almost bungling the hunt today,” the helmet cocks sharply at that accusation, “you realize that you need me. I’ve got skills you can’t even come close to.”

It’s hard to determine what sound comes out of his modulator, but you think it’s a snort. “What are you talking about.”

“My aforementioned people skills, for a start. Don’t forget I was the one that took in that warlord on Strigoth by getting him to follow me out to the edge of town without any of his guards. Not everything has to be a shootout. And I knew the quarry today was going to run before you did.”

Mando crosses his arms over his chestplate. “Keep telling yourself that. I’m still not raising your percentage.”

“I can hack any security system since the final Imperial update release, which is most of them in the Rim, and on top of all that”—you swing your left hand in like you’re going to slap him upside the helmet, and when he lifts his arm to block, you smack him over the ear with your right—“I’m faster than you.”

You jump back instantly, not sure how he’s going to react. His body tenses up into a fighter’s crouch, starting to come up out of the chair toward you. Then he sits back down, body language deliberately relaxing. He adjusts his helmet with one hand. “You’re a child.”

“I call it playful,” you shoot back, the adrenaline rush of what you just did almost making you giggle. “Another asset you seem to be lacking.”

He only shrugs in response, then swivels back to facing the oncoming stars.

He’s given you an opening that’s impossible to resist. As soon as his back is turned you swing your open hand forward. He’s ready for it, which you basically expected, and he knocks your arm away before you can make contact with his helmet this time. And ouch, that gauntlet of his jars your forearm all the way to the bone. You make a frustrated little noise. “Well, if you want to stick to business, we still have to talk about the final terms of the split. We can go back to 55-45, if you admit that today I had the superior skills.”

“With you taking the forty-five?”

“Hell no.”

He pauses, and you think he’s about to say something mature and reasonable, like he always does. Instead, he comes back with a very calmly-worded: “I could put you out the airlock right now.”

You swear there’s a wry little tone to that modulated voice. “You’d have to catch me first”—you slap the bucket on his head again—“and we’ve already determined I’m faster than you.”

“Stop that,” he growls, finally standing up. His cloak swirls dramatically and you try to suppress the primal feelings that make you a little weak in the knees when he comes up to his full height in such close quarters.

“Make me.” The words are out of your mouth before you can decide if they’re really such a good idea.

The Mandalorian’s helmet tilts. Now it’s his turn to try and work out what you may or may not be implying. When he finally speaks, there’s a new tone in his voice, one that catches something deep in your belly and drags. “You think you can take me?”

…Can you? You may be as good a Hunter as he is, but you couldn’t say unarmed combat is one of your strong suits. And you don’t even want to think about how much he out-weighs you, especially with all that armor on. But how can you possibly eat your pride and back down after you’ve provoked this?

You look around the tiny space of the _Razor Crest’s_ cockpit. Mando’s helmet stays squarely aimed at your face.

“A lot of expensive equipment in here,” you say casually. “Wouldn’t want to damage anything throwing down right now.”

“Mm-hmm.” His skeptical hum makes the modulator crackle. Did he just lean in closer?

At this point the sexual tension is thrumming like a mis-firing engine in the space between you. If he had a face you could read, a mouth you could tilt your face up and kiss, you’d know what to do, but this? Even your renowned ‘people skills’ are failing you now.

You look away from the impassive, dark lens that covers his eyes, and that’s when he retaliates. One heavy gloved hand whips around your side and thuds a stinging strike right into your ass. The impact knocks you forward, almost into his chest, but you stop yourself before your hands touch his breastplate.

You suck in a breath and freeze, wide eyes drawn like a magnet back to that beskar face. Mando just spanked you. Hard. Mando… just… The pain ignites an arousal so sudden and strong that you’re worried you’re about to start trembling. It would absolutely kill your reputation if any Hunter found out that your sexual tastes ran submissive, that a deep secret part of you wanted nothing but to be overpowered and forced, to be used by someone stronger than you, better than you…

You can’t think of anything to do but flee. “I… uh…” His helmet tilts again, watching your face closely as you stutter. “Yeah, I guess I was being a little too childish. I’ll stop…stop trying to make you lighten up.” Your eyes slide away from his helmet’s eye slit, unable to handle even the imagined eye contact. “I’ll leave you alone to do whatever it is you do up here. Meditate. I’m gonna go down and…” you make for the ladder to the cargo hold, “and clean my blaster.”

He just watches you go. You can still feel the impact of his hand on your ass, with every movement of your leg as you climb down the rungs of the ladder. Fuck, it’s making your pussy tingle just a badly, too. Your head has just dropped below the hatch when Mando’s modulated voice follows you down with a suggestion that sounds suspiciously like a command. “Why don’t you clean mine, too.”

You feel your face and chest getting hot as soon as you get down to the relative privacy of the ship’s lower level. If you were trying to maintain control of the conversation, you’d say something sassy back to that, not let him win an inch of dominance, but you’re not in control anymore, are you? Not of yourself, not of whatever this is that’s going on between you. And it’s so dangerous. How would you keep his respect, if your top competitor in the Guild knew this about you, what you wanted him to do to you…

Mando’s weapon rack is set into the wall across from the ladder. Certainly there’s cleaning supplies stashed somewhere in that section, but you’re too shaky to get right to work. Instead, you walk down along the racks of carbonite, idly inspecting his cargo as you try and pull yourself together.

Four of the racks are currently occupied; the Mandalorian has been busy. Each one is tagged with a bounty’s chain code. You recognize two of them from Karga’s list. Quarries that you had passed on, that seemed too difficult to be worth their price. Bastard was about to show you up again when he unloaded these trophies.

You take a deep breath when you reach the end of the line. Your ass still tingles in the most tantalizing way, but you grit your teeth and tell yourself to ignore it. Maybe if you just stay down here, avoid your traveling companion until the ship reaches Nevarro, everything else will go just fine. No more bruises to your pride, no dirty secrets revealed. Yeah. That’s smart.

You turn and Mando is just there, boxing you in between the racks of carbonite carriers. How can a guy covered with so much metal be this stealthy? You try not to let shock show on your face; which only means you end up freezing like a prey animal.

“You liked that.” He makes the accusation solidly, with the weight of heavy interest bearing down behind it.

“What are you talking about.” You know, but you don’t want to answer for the heat that surely showed in your face when Mando spanked you. You try to wiggle past him, but he doesn’t acknowledge your intent, makes no move to make way for you.

“You know.” He’s just staring down at you.

You twitch in irritation and decide if he’s ignoring personal space, so can you. Your chest and thigh slide against solid armor as you force your body through the gap between him and the carbonite. “Get out of my way.”

His helmet is the only thing that moves, tracking your labored progression. “Make me.” He echoes your earlier challenge with an amused little tone.

“Fine.” You use your entire body weight to slam him into the rack on the other side. But he recovers too quickly; when you try to step away, into the center of the ship’s hold, he gets an arm around your chest.

As if your adrenaline wasn’t spiking already; now your combat reflexes kick in and you pull him in tighter, squatting low and grabbing that arm for leverage. With a quick burst of effort from your legs, you flip him over your shoulder.

You follow him down, taking advantage of the way a fall inside all that metal has to stun him, and climb on top of his body. “Fifty-five percent.” You also attempt to change the subject.

He reaches up and it’s a struggle to control his arms. He’s kriffing strong, and you’ve already taken off your combat equipment with the hidden tricks you usually use to deal with opponents that are bigger than you. He twists underneath you, in some way that you don’t expect, and with a rough shove and a brief crushing sensation along one leg you find yourself flat on the deck beneath him. “Are you really going to pretend you don’t like this?” his modulator purrs down at you.

Subject not changed. Every one of your nerve endings is in high gear now, and there’s a powerful urge inside you that wants to mewl and spread your legs apart for him right here, like a bitch in heat acknowledging the alpha male. You push the image back with a growl between your teeth, and use your thighs only to try and throw him off you.

Mando responds to your offensive by smothering you back down with his hips. Something solid crushes into the apex of your thighs, and you remember his armor does _not_ have a codpiece.

A feral little moan escapes past your lips. Mando stops, lifting up just a little off your body and cocking his helmet to the side where it hovers only a hand’s breadth above your face. “What was that?” he asks, voice pleased.

And just like that, the whole game has changed. You were so worried he was trying to embarrass you, get one over on you. But if he likes it like this too… You reach your hand down boldly and throw his question back at him. “What’s this?” you ask as your palm makes contact with a delightfully solid bulge straining against the thick fabric of his pants.

A deep rumble purrs out of his modulator. “If you can manage to behave, maybe you’ll find out.”

How does he know exactly what to say to make you squirm? Your body floods with heat as you inwardly flail around to find a non-submissive answer. “And what happens if I don’t behave?”

“Then, maybe things get really interesting.”

Oh. Fuck. Now there’s an option. Maybe you don’t even have to submit to get the kind of tumble you want from him. You bare your teeth in a ferocious, challenging grin, and take advantage of the way he’s pulled his weight back to twist out from under him, knocking his helmet one more time with your elbow as you go.

You scramble across the deck out from under him, but a heavy hand catches your belt before you can get very far. You kick but Mando’s already inside your reach; your heel glances off his armor without even slowing him down.

He tugs on your belt, harshly, and climbs over the backs of your legs to force you down. “Where do you you think you’re going?” His voice is tight with the effort of getting himself positioned on top of you, squishing your belly into the deck.

“Mmf” is the sound you make in response, because now he’s pressing a forearm into your back and putting most of his weight on it.

“Hold still.” You give him a little token resistance, but mostly you let him get settled how he wants, holding you down to the floor evenly with the left side of his body. Leaving his right hand free. “So. What happens when you don’t behave.”

He spanks you, solid and centered and sharp.

You expected it just enough to hold your breath, and make sure you don’t cry out. You may be face-down on the floor under the Mandalorian, but you still have your pride. The first smack is followed by two more, and he grunts when you still don’t make a noise.

Heavy fingers smooth over the sting in your flesh. His hand feels amazing as it covers the swell of your ass, a slow, deliberate drag that feels warmer than it ought to and much more soothing than you expected.

“What’s it going to be, Y/N?” he asks. When you don’t answer fast enough for him, he swats at your other cheek, lazy and powerful.

 _Maybe_ he got a little noise out of you with that last one; it’s just too hard to stay quiet and not flinch both at the same time under the strength of that arm.

His helmet comes closer down to your face. “It’s okay to let go.” He speaks with such confidence, such seductive calm. “I can tell you want to submit. You don’t have to keep fighting it.” He shifts on top of you. “Though I do like it when you struggle.”

Your body rolls enticingly underneath him, without your brain’s permission. “Don’t you dare tell anyone you got me like this.”

“Of course not.” His answer is immediate. You remember how he’s always been an honorable man, that part of his reputation impeccable. Perhaps you really can trust him with this side of you. He sticks to the Code, he honors his promises, and lives by the Way of the Mandalore.

That last one begs a certain question, of course. “I wasn’t sure that Mandalorians could even have sex.”

A throaty noise makes the modulator crackle. “We have our ways.” A pause. “Is that what you want?”

You lift your head a little higher. He doesn’t give you much freedom, but he shifts just enough to help you feel comfortable breathing again. “If that’s what you’re offering, yeah, I wouldn’t be opposed to things ending up there.”

His hand gropes over your ass, fingers diving to tease more sensitive flesh between your legs. “After we… resolve a few things.” He grips tightly, almost cruelly. You agree in a sound that comes out much more high-pitched than you intended as he palms your ass and kneads it boldly. “Like whether you’re ready to start behaving like a good girl now.”

You still can’t bring yourself to just say yes, as hot as his words are making you. But you curl into his hand, just a little. To encourage him.

He growls something in a language you don’t know. It sounds like a curse and his weight is pressed down on you again as he scrambles with your belt, loosening your pants just enough to shove everything off the curve of your hips, baring you to mid-thigh in the ship’s cool air. When he spanks you now it’s sharper, the sting lighting up your tender flesh under every open-palmed strike that just keeps coming and coming. “Rubbing your ass on me does not count as an answer.” _Smack._ “I want to hear you say it.” _Smack._ “That you submit.” _Smack._ “That your ass is mine tonight.” A few involuntary cries squeeze out of your throat before he relents and rubs you again, the leather of his glove singing over your overstimulated skin.

You slow your panting breaths before you speak up, endeavoring to match his even tone. “Maybe I’ll play along for a little while.” You twist further, until you can stare up into his silver mask. “What do you want me to do?”

He pulls back, sitting up on his hip. From the angle of his helmet you’d guess that your answer does not really count as the submission he was looking for. Nor did you mean it to be. Someone’s gonna top you, they’ve got to earn it. Even if they are already, physically, on top of you. His moment of thought ends. “Take off your clothes.”

His hand squeezes at your ass one more time as you shift, like he’s loathe to let go while you comply with his command. You make as quick of work with your boots as you can, then push your bottoms off after them. Mando’s sitting beside you, leaning up against a large cargo crate, helmet fixed on your slowly-revealed body.

You’re so self-conscious that your skin feels like it could be glowing, as you bare it for him inch by inch. There’s nothing to read in that cold helmet, but its angle never wavers, riveted on you.

Once you’ve gotten yourself completely naked, he beckons you to come to him with two curling fingers. It’s amazingly erotic to move toward him with nothing on, while every inch of the Mandalorian warrior is still covered in battle-scarred plates.

He reaches out, palm up for your hand. You place your hand in his and he draws you in, until you’re kneeling right beside him. His fingers trail up your arms, over your shoulders, coaxing you closer. His touch is lighter than you expected. But you can hear him breathing through the mask. He’s struggling to stay this calm. To savor this.

His helmet tips down as his fingers knead harder; he watches himself press and squeeze the flesh of your shoulders, your neck, your jaw. The modulator translates another buzzing hum. Does it fascinate him, to see so much bare and vulnerable skin, when he can show none?

You feel your nipples tighten, a silent craving for contact. This feels good, but you want so much more. You look right into his eye slit. “I won’t break,” you say, twisting yourself tighter into the grip of his hands.

The Mandalorian growls and rises up to his knees, helmet filling your vision as he presses himself close and rakes his fingers down your back. He’s looking down at your panting chest and squeezing your ribs, watching the way your pristine tits are so close to brushing against his dirty metal chestplate. He clutches you in, pressing your belly against his, betraying a desire for closeness that he just can’t achieve.

Your hands come up to his shoulders, burrowing through the cowl wrapped around his collar, trying to make contact. Your fingers curl up the column of his neck, where the thinner fabric lets you feel a hint of his body heat. He stiffens when you come close to the bottom of his helmet.

“Leave it,” he snarls, just as you’re telling him “Don’t worry, I wasn’t—"

He scoops you up tightly and sets you on top of the cargo crate he had been leaning against. Your legs open and wrap around him of their own volition as he presses between them. You cross your ankles underneath his cloak, locking his body in close. You let your hands rest on his shoulders, just inside the pauldrons, but don’t attempt to slide under anything again.

Leather-clad fingers rake up your ribs, dragging up the sides of your body before they close over your breasts. Finally. You arc into him and let your eyes close, feeling the texture of his gloves across sensitive skin, the hungry twisting and tugging against your nipples.

“Open your eyes,” he demands, voice breathy with as much arousal as you’re feeling. “I want you to look at me, keep looking at me, let me see…”

He trails off, but you can guess what he means. Let him see what it feels like to be touched. You tip your chin down and lock your eyes on that T-shaped window in his helmet. His fingers pinch around both your nipples at once and your jaw drops. He tickles around the edges, then grabs up the full swell of your tits and squeezes. Your eyes try to flutter shut; it’s already hard to remember his instruction.

He settles into an entirely delicious rhythm, kneading your peaks, watching every crease of your brow, reading every gasp and twitch of your lip so that he can tweak at your nipples just right, until the pleasure is almost unbearable. You don’t even realize your eyes have fallen closed until his hand disappears from one of your tits and slaps at your cheek.

It’s not hard, just a slight sting, the corrective swat of a playful alpha. “Eyes,” he reminds you, then goes right back to his blissful torture.

Your core is warming almost unbearably. Every tug at your nipples is drawing a tingling line of pleasure right down between your thighs, taking the heat that had already awoken there during your spanking and fanning the flames, until the need for more is almost unbearable. “Mando,” you moan, tilting your hips forward on the crate, “please…”

A pleased little sound comes out of the modulator. “Please what?”

“Urmmm,” you moan at him, twisting your body, trying to scoot your hips a little closer to him. “I need more.”

He responds by pinching your nipples harder, just enough pain to make you gasp and curl. You pout up toward his helmet. “That’s not what I meant.”

“But you like it.” He does it again, and this time you cry out. A stabbing ache deep between your legs reminds you you’re still not getting what you want.

Fingers tickle down your belly, brushing across your inner thighs. Then they slide around behind and pinch you hard on the ass. You wail in frustration.

Mando tips his helmet closer to your face. “Tell me again how I don’t know how to be playful.”

“Fuck!” you cry through gritted teeth.

“Fuck what?”

Your hands scramble down his armored chest, aiming for his belt to just reach down and show him what you want.

“Uh uh.” He grabs your wrists before you can do more than pop the buckle on his utility belt. “Hands stay on my shoulders.”

You immediately comply, too far gone now to be contradictory. “Fuck me, Mando.”

“Oh yeah?” He straightens up a little, his posture cocky as he stands there wrapped in your naked legs. “You ready to say it?”

“I’m yours.” You don’t even hesitate. “Do whatever you want with me.”

He takes his belt the rest of the way off with one hand, lets it drop to the floor. The other hand is busy squeezing your ass, then traveling around your hip. He pushes your legs open a little wider, then his thumbs come running down your inner thighs, pulling at your labia, spreading you even more. You lean back, curling your hips up, to give him a better view.

His breath hisses out from under the helmet. “You want me to fuck this little pussy?”

“Yes,” you moan, as his thumbs stroke up and down, just around its edges.

He pulls you open wider. “You ready to be a good girl, and do exactly as I say?”

“Fuck, yes.”

“Exactly,” he repeats, and a ghost of a chill runs down your spine in the midst of all this heat. He takes one of your hands from his shoulder, and turns it palm up near your mouth. “Spit.”

The thumb of his other hand is still sliding up and down next to your opening, not touching your wetness. You appreciate that he’s not about to let his dirty gloves make things unsanitary. You gather up saliva to the front of your mouth and carefully coat your first two fingers.

Mando keeps his grip on your wrist, and pushes your hand down to your entrance as soon as he’s done watching your lips and tongue work over your own fingers.

You smooth the spit over your slit, Mando’s grip still guiding you, making sure you do a thorough job lubricating yourself. His other thumb creeps down over your clit, rocking across it carefully, steadily, his helmet angling back up to watch your face.

It’s a struggle to keep your eyes open against the pleasure of that pressure, finally right where you need it. But you remember his rule. You keep your gaze locked on the beskar as your own fingers find a rhythm underneath his, the gloved hand locked around your wrist urging you to press into yourself deeper, faster, in coordination with his rolling thumb. You find yourself clutching at the back of his neck just to keep your balance as the needy pleasure explodes. “That’s it,” his voice soothes over the modulator, “get yourself ready for me.”

You’re doing more than getting ready. Even just this much touch from him is sending you straight toward a spiraling orgasm, now that all the wild pleasure built up by every slap and struggle and pinch finally has somewhere to _go._

He sees it coming, the way your eyelids go tight at the effort to keep them open and looking at him. “Don’t,” he warns. “Save it.”

He stops moving his thumb, though he doesn’t release its pressure. He swirls your hand inside of yourself one last time before drawing it out, then setting it back onto his shoulder in line with the other one.

You can’t help but roll your hips against his thumb while Mando starts loosening his own clothing. You want to call him cruel when he removes that hand too, bringing it up to caress your neck, but you have no ability to talk back anymore. Especially when his fingers curl up underneath your jaw. “Now. The most important thing.” You can feel him pulling himself out of his pants, though he’s brought his body in closer and you can’t see that far with your head tilted up in his hand like this. “Don’t look down.” His fingers squeeze tighter around your jaw, the heel of his hand pressing into the top of your throat. “If you look, I’ll have to kill you.”

He could be exaggerating, just to make this hotter for you, more intense, but you remember what he said to some over-curious bitch at Karga’s tavern once. _No living thing has seen me without my helmet._ Apparently The Way is preserved if violators quickly become only the formerly living.

“Yes,” you say quickly, voicebox buzzing against his wrist, words mumbling together against the unrelenting pressure in his fingers, “I understand.”

A few more quick movements down where you can’t see, and then you feel something warm and thick pressing up against your core. You both moan together as he slides his head up and down your slick folds, only fumbling a little before he finds his aim. Fuck. This is what you’ve been craving. You brace yourself against the cargo crate as best you can, squeezing your legs around him to invite him in.

You think you're ready to take him, but you're not. He crushes in bigger and wider than you’re used to, and you wail up into that impassive beskar face and try in vain to remember how to relax and take a dick like this one.

His breath is catching in little straining grunts; apparently this is pretty overwhelming for him, too. When he’s halfway in he removes his guiding hand from his own shaft and returns his thumb to your clit; that helps. The more familiar pleasure of his pressure helps melt your walls into the stretch of him. “You’re so. Fucking. Tight.” His hand never wavers on your jaw as he starts to pump, in and out, getting a little bit deeper into you with every thrust, groaning a little louder with every inch he gains.

Fuck. This position has every muscle in your body straining, which is probably why it’s so hard for him to fit in, but you don’t even care because the intensity of it is everything that you’ve been craving. “Fuck—” he adjusts his grip just a fraction, so you can talk a little easier, “fuck me just how you want, Mando, I can take it.”

He groans and takes his thumb off your clit, bringing that big hand around to grab onto your hip and brace you for a wilder pace. You only bemoan the loss of his thumb for a second, because the new angle slides his cock against a wicked spot deeper inside you.

“Ahh!” you wail, and wrap your arms tighter around his neck, needing him to hold you up as he fucks up into you at an angle that destroys the precarious balance you had been maintaining on the edge of this cargo crate. His controlling grip on your neck is choking you just a little, a sensation so erotic that you can feel your impending orgasm sizzle and tighten all around his cock the more you focus on it. “Mando, I—Can I?” you pant, your face so close that your breath is fogging up the beskar.

“Yes, fucking come for me,” he orders, then presses into you harder, his grip momentarily cutting off your airway completely. A second later your orgasm hits you like a ton of bricks, spasming every muscle in your core, your thighs, in your silent, breathless chest, and Mando just keeps fucking you through it all.

As soon as the heel of his hand slides off your throat you’re screaming through your teeth, the sound bouncing along with his thrusts. His pace is relentless until your orgasm finally peaks, and the stiffness of your body starts to melt against him. You realize that you’ve wrapped your arms fully around his helmet, getting as close as his controlling grip on your jaw would allow.

His pace slows, but it does not stop. From the aching deep inside your belly, you know that he’s still fully hard, just giving you a brief moment to recover yourself.

You sigh into the side of his head, a long, lovely sound. Your body shivers with aftershocks around his solid shaft, keeping your pleasure brimming, not letting it fade. That hand controlling your jaw pushes you back, gently, until he can see your face again.

His grip spasms on your ass. He must like what he sees. “Close your eyes.” You do, and he starts to pull away. “Keep them closed. I’m turning you over.”

You unlock your ankles from behind his back as he draws his length out of your body, both of you gasping and shuddering as he withdraws. Your legs come down to the ground rather stiffly, and you’re glad of the way he manhandles you along, until you’re bending over the crate with your thighs pressed into its edge. You’re not sure your legs would have held you up without his help.

Mando wastes no time lining his cock back up again. You hold onto the edges of the cargo crate as he presses in eagerly. A gasp rips from your throat as your head lifts up in an involuntary bend of your back; this position lets him drive in deeper, forcing you to adjust to his size all over again.

A split second after your head comes up, Mando’s fingers squeeze through your hair at the base of your skull, using that grip to hold you steady and facing forward. You really weren’t trying to turn and look, but you suppose he can’t risk it. He keeps control of your head, pulling your hair a little in time to his thrusts, as he groans out a deep, pleasured sound. You give voice to how you’re feeling, too, letting little sobbing moans spill out in time to his insistent thrusts. He can’t see your face anymore, and you barely have the leverage to move your hips against him, so this is the only way to keep the connection.

“Oh, keep making those sounds,” Mando pants, then the modulator keeps crackling with more of his soft grunts as he plumbs your depths. “You take me so good.” When he flattens his hips against your ass it definitely hurts; he’s reached the end of you, and is trying to stretch past it, deep inside. But even that pain is erotic; you wail and submit under his praise and his smothering need.

His grunts and his thrusts both start coming faster, and just as you fear that you’re hitting your limit, that you can’t take any more, some new dimension of release and submission open up inside you, and all that suffering transforms into a pleasure so fierce that your walls are clenching and your mind is wiped by an orgasm that turns the rest of your body to jelly.

When your mind clears you find your cheek flush to the surface of the cargo crate. Mando’s hand is pressing it there, with his fingers wrapped across your eyes, and he’s groaning through his teeth as he smashes himself as deep into your body as he can get. He shudders and bucks, roaring through his orgasm, the modulator translating the sound with an almost musical edge.

When he’s done he sags partially on top of you, his belly resting on your hips while his arms keep his chestplate from digging into your back. His cock is keeping you plugged, a thick presence that makes you feel stretched even when it’s going soft. One of his hands is still resting over your eyes, but all the tension has gone out of it. You wonder if he’d feel the flicker of your eyelashes against his glove if your lids accidentally parted. You keep them closed.

He hums, fingertips running softly up your back. You wonder if he’s looking down, admiring your bare skin once again. Your entire body is thrumming, the satisfaction spreading to every muscle fiber. You know things will feel awkward soon, but for now you really don’t want to move.

Eventually Mando pulls himself gently out of you. A spurt of warm liquid follows, running thickly down your leg. Fuck, how backed up was he?

“Don’t move,” he warns, lifting his body up off of yours.

You give him a contented little murmur and stay perfectly relaxed. “Eyes still shut,” you reassure him. You’re not even annoyed at the lack of trust these constant reminders might convey. This is something he has to control strictly. Certainly it’s a great privilege that he even took the risk with you. You listen to his footsteps retreat and return, as you lay draped over the cargo crate and enjoy the bliss that is only just beginning to fade.

“You can open them now,” he says softly once he’s standing over you again. One hand slides over your ass, pausing at a spot that feels surprisingly sensitive. “I’ve given you a welt or two here.”

“Souvenir,” you grin up at him, twisting your spine while keeping your hips relaxed under his hand. “Thanks.”

Mando nods his helmet back at you. He’s got a cloth in his other hand, dampened from the fresher, and he wipes up the mess he’s left between your legs with careful, steady dabs. “I should be the one thanking you,” he says softly, maybe even a little awkwardly. “That was…”

“Overdue?” you quip, as he’s wiping all the way down to your ankle to clean up the enormous load he had for you.

“Maybe just a little.” He steps away to trade the towel for a thin, precisely-folded blanket, which he shakes out and spreads over you. You stand up in his arms as he does, guiding him to wrap it around your shoulders. You hold it tight and lean in toward him for a snug embrace. The blanket makes pressing your bare body against his armored plating much more comfortable. “Come here,” he mutters, and draws you to sit on the floor with him, leaning up against the cargo crate and each other. Even the afterglow of wild sex with the Mandalorian doesn’t make his spare ship any less uncomfortable, but you focus on the way his arm holds you tucked in tight against his body, the way you can feel him breathing against your ribs.

“That was good,” you breathe.

“Yeah.”

You lean your head tentatively against his shoulder, wondering how much intimacy he’s going to allow now. His arm shifts, helping you get more comfortable, and his thumb is dragging back and forth, idly, along the top of your thigh.

There’s one question you have to ask.

“Would you really have had to kill me, if I looked?”

He holds his breath for a moment, then lets it blow out with a soft glottal sound. “Most Mandalorians would. But honestly? To me, that wouldn’t have made a difference. Even if you didn’t live to tell the tale, my honor would still be smirched. I’d know I’d failed a central tenet, and from every day after I’d be living a lie.”

Your brow creases, and you turn to look up at him even though you can’t read his face. That was kriffing serious. “So it’s not just about the helmet.”

His beskar mask nods. “Not the way I was raised.”

You turn your gaze away, idly looking across the cargo bay. “Wow.” You’d never seen him not covered head to toe, and you never would.

“But I think…” he trails off as his hands burrow under your blanket, coming around to meet each other in front of your belly and fumbling with something. “I think this is acceptable.” His hand finds one of yours, and air rushes into your chest in a silent, measured gasp as you realize the fingers winding between yours are _his,_ warm skin, completely bared to the wrist.

You sit together in silence for a long time, feeling the twin pulses of living palms pressed together, the small twitches of muscle and the sparkle of nerve endings when a finger softly strokes across the back of a hand. The more you imagine how much this must mean to him, the more it means to you, until your head is spinning and you can barely handle the intimacy of the kind of touch you’ve always taken simply for granted.

You’re afraid to ask what this means. This whole encounter was so unplanned; you don’t even know what you want from the Mandalorian, much less what he wants from you. Is he doing this just because of the afterglow rush of soft hormones, or does he think you and he could be something more?

And when you feel awkward, you talk. People skills, remember? You squeeze his hand and restart an old conversation. “Told you we make a good team.”

He grunts.

Maybe you should just shut up and enjoy the cuddle. But his non-answer does not help your racing mind to still. The urge to tease him starts taking over again. “You know, we’re still not done negotiating that split.”

Mando groans softly. “The only split I want to think about is how far I can split open your legs.”

A new thrill runs up your spine, but you stay on track with only a small giggle escaping your throat. “How about we round it back up to sixty percent for me, and as soon as that big dick can get hard again, I’ll throw on a blindfold and give you the best head you ever had in your life.”

Mando’s fingers card through yours, and his other hand comes up to play with your hair. “Tempting.” There’s a rumble deep in his throat that makes your aching cunt tighten. “But let’s just call it 50-50, and fuck all the way to Nevarro.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes I know they use the metric system in space, but my brain can only think about dicks in inches, excuse me.

Mando’s bare hand, secret and cozy under the blanket, doesn’t stay still in your grip for long. He seems compelled to explore every inch of skin in naked contact, his longer fingers winding and pressing between yours, thumb rubbing circles into your palm and then tracing along the softer skin at the back. Your tightly wound hands are resting together on your lap, and soon he grows bolder, expanding beyond just hands as he tickles your thigh with his pinky. He untwists your fingers so he can turn his palm down and run his hand across your warm leg.

You lean into his shoulder, sighing out a soft sound of encouragement. Afraid to say any more and break the spell. Mando’s breath is catching in his throat at odd intervals as his hand moves slowly, deliberately, reverently. He’s not seeking out any particular goal, but still there is a mission in his fingers, in the broad heavy breadth of his palm, as he slides around your knee, ghosting past the seam between your legs and caressing over your belly. “So… soft,” he marvels.

His tone just about melts you. Usually you keep your guard up pretty high around your lovers, knowing nothing ever lasts in the kind of life you live. Seemed like the Mandalorian operated the same way, too, after the explosive, purely physical encounter you two had just shared. But now? The soft warmth of this moment is making you start to vibrate on a whole different frequency.

It’s dangerous. You tell yourself not to misunderstand him. The tenderness of his touch as he drags his fingers up between your breasts may be purely selfish on his part. He rarely gets to do this; experience the feeling of any kind of skin underneath his. It might not mean anything to him that it’s yours.

His voice crackles softly through the modulator. “Lay down for me.”

Right here on the deck, huh? His upper body leans into yours, corralling you forward. It’s not like there’s anywhere else, you suppose; didn’t look like there was room for two on that rack that only barely qualifies as a cot in the closet. He stays close as you pivot on your hip and lay your blanket-wrapped back down on the ground. His bare hand remains on your thigh, under the fabric, through the whole transition. He uses the gloved one to manage that cover as you’re settling down, with deft little tugs that make certain it stays fully wrapped around you, hiding your whole body and giving his exposed fingers free reign to travel anywhere they might want to go.

Mando settles in close alongside you on the ground, resting his weight on one elbow while using that hand to hold the blanket down tight across your shoulders. It’s strange how the meticulous way he’s keeping you covered is only making you feel more exposed. Every square inch of skin kept under the blanket is being readied for the pleasure of his touch. You don’t know if this is just some extended version of cuddling, or if it’s going to turn into a sexual round two; but either way it feels divine.

You end up with no concept of how much time passes as he explores you. The slide of his fingers is not explicitly sexual, and yet that only makes it feel more erotic, like every part of your body exists only for him. You relax into the floor and gaze up at his unchanging helmet, inclined not too far above your face as he leans over you to reach everything he wants. You have no idea if his eyes are open or closed under there, if he’s focused entirely on the touch or if he likes watching your face too. You listen to the variances in his breath: slow and long as he slides his palm along your thigh, hitching just a little as he takes his time with the swell of your hipbone, pulling air faster and deeper past the beskar when his thumb starts to outline your breasts.

By the time he gets down to the apex of your thighs you’re panting too, and you spread your knees so eagerly that one leg slips out the side of the cover. Mando’s helmet swivels and you both stare at the contrast the living warmth of your skin makes against the cool tones of steel that surround it.

You press the outside of your thigh deliberately against the armor plate covering his leg where he lays alongside you. It’s a thrill to feel more of his hardness against your open vulnerability. Mando makes no move to fix the blanket, content to nestle his bare hand just above your sex where the rumpled folds of fabric keep his warrior’s honor safe.

He props himself up a little higher, still looking at your bare leg as he gets the leverage he wants to run his fingertips down over your lower lips, barely skimming the surface of your most intimate skin. You can’t help but sigh and lift your hips toward him, offering yourself up fully.

“Do you want me to…?” he breathes, trailing off as his finger slides up the seam of your slit with the tiniest increase in pressure.

“Fuck,” you exhale, screwing your eyes shut against the tantalizing need that rushes over you, “yes.”

Mando keeps teasing your outer folds with several languid strokes of his fingers before even beginning to part them. Is he teasing you, or himself? Heavy exhales leave both your throats when one digit slides far enough through to feel wetness.

His finger moves just a little bit faster, dragging through that slickness along your inner lips, just deep enough to make it clear how wet you already are for him, not deep enough to be penetrating you at all. You’re swollen and sensitive here, after the poundings you so recently took from him, but he’s not pressing hard enough to make you feel sore.

A second finger joins the first, pressing up and down in ever-widening circles, sliding between your every fold, dipping shallowly into your juicy hole just enough to drag that wetness along every hidden nerve ending he can find between your legs. It’s almost obscene the way he’s playing with you, spreading and twisting and curling his fingertips everywhere except the places most men go straight towards.

You squeeze your fists to keep still through the sweet ordeal. You don’t even realize you’ve thrown your head back until the short command buzzes over his modulator: “Eyes.”

So it’s back to that. The reminder of his rule dials your consciousness back to a sweet submissive frequency again; the rest of your body melts as you tip your head up to look him in the face. Your neck strains just a little, bemoaning the lack of a pillow.

Mando shifts, his undulating fingers momentarily stilled between your plush lips as he repositions his weight and slides the forearm he’s leaning on behind your head. His vambrace is not the softest support, but you’ll take it just to feel more encircled in his arms.

His beskar face looms so close to yours now. Obediently, you keep your eyes fixed on the tinted screen from where his gaze may or may not be staring back into yours. The contrast is almost unfair, but it’s also a relief from the way real eye contact can sometimes feel too intense. You relax your face and let your eyes slide along the silvery edge of his visor, to memorize the solid, elegant dips and curves of his distinctive helmet. Your gaze mimics the languid slide of the Mandalorian’s fingers, and the way they seem to be memorizing the deep curves of your body.

The first time his fingertips circle your clit you buck up into him, then force yourself to freeze so as not to risk knocking the blanket even more askew than it already is. Mando’s helmet emits a deep sound that might be a chuckle, and he very slowly, very carefully, drags one fingertip entirely _around_ your clitoris. It makes you shudder beneath him, to feel him so close to that hotspot and yet still deliberately _not_ touching it. Your eyes plead up at his mask as he does it again and again. The sides of his fingers are only barely brushing the edges of your clit, and it’s making you feel like you’re going to burn up with your need.

Your tongue pokes out between your teeth. You have the ridiculous urge to lick along a smooth curve of that beskar face; anything that might possibly make him break. You settle for rubbing your hand up his flank, seeking the chinks in his armor where maybe only one layer of fabric might stand between you and him. You find a gap between two padded segments, right around his ribs, opened up by the way he’s laying propped up on his side. You think you hear the modulator hiss when you make contact, feel a little warmth through the cloth, a part of him that’s almost soft. As you fit your whole hand into the gap, palm pressing flat against his body, Mando’s fingertip finally rolls broadly over your clit.

You hold on to him there as the relief of direct contact rushes into an overflowing burst of pleasure that has you straining. He rocks against your bud solidly, in circles that grow larger and larger, one fingertip sliding into two, and then most of his hand is rubbing between your legs. Teasing, again. He keeps coming back to more direct pressure on your clit, at least, giving you little bursts that keep your passion climbing as his fingers slide luxuriously through your pussy until you’re a moaning mess. Especially since every time he returns to your opening, he dips in a little deeper, seeking further and further for the nectar to coat his fingers.

You feel your legs start to involuntarily shake. “Mando,” you whimper, “please let me come.”

He pauses, angling his helmet more directly at your face. “You’re greedy.”

And then he just continues that slow, possessive pace, not spending enough time in any particular place to let you finish. His fingers are more and more inside you now, curling and twisting with that same unreal patience, noting the spots that make you sigh and sputter, but not driving at anything. And though he might be leaning happily into the pressure of your hand at his flank, the imploring squeezes you give him there cannot make him change his pace.

When you can’t take it anymore, when two or maybe more of his fingers are plunging as deep inside you as they can fit, you lift your own hand to your clit, underneath the blanket. Maybe you’re hoping he won’t notice. Maybe, as submissive as he makes you feel, you’re just a brat at heart. You can’t stop yourself from groaning at the bliss of pressing down on that magic button yourself, while Mando’s hand fills you from the inside.

He pulls his fingers out of you, abruptly. His hand closes over yours in an instant, catching you in the act. You press harder on yourself anyway, and open your needy little mouth to pant into his face.

He squeezes hard around your fingers, pulls your hand up and away from yourself without mercy. “Do I need to tie you up?”

You wiggle under him, abandoning your obviously-failed plan with only a tiny pout. “You might.”

He gets his glove back on surprisingly fast. He comes up to his knees and then pauses, looming over you on the floor. “Stay. Don’t touch yourself again.”

You stick out your bottom lip, squirming under the blanket that covers you chin to toe aside from that one errant leg.

“Hands where I can see them.”

Exhaling sharply, you pull your arms out of the blanket, laying your hands flat on your stomach for him and staring up at him with a bratty scowl through your eyelashes.

“Keep up the attitude. See where it gets you.”

You roll your body on the floor, squeezing your legs together against the burning need he’s left between them. “Mando, I’m just…” you rock your hips, running your hands over your body and silently pleading with him to take mercy on your needy state.

He watches you, cocking his head to the side at your shameless writhing beneath him. “You’re tough. You’ll make it.” He stands abruptly and crosses the bay to a storage closet. You don’t miss the way he had to adjust himself in his pants on the way up. The discipline of this man, you marvel, not to fuck you into the floor right here.

You expect him to come back with a set of binders, like he uses on his quarries, but Mando returns to your line of sight carrying a length of thick woven cord wrapped over his arm. “How… rustic,” you remark at his low-tech solution.

“Up on your knees.”

A patient man like Mando could probably drag this out for hours. If you want to get your satisfaction, you’re going to have to be as seductive as possible, try to make him break. You drop the blanket from your body, exposing everything boldly as you roll yourself up and sit on your heels.

Hard to say if the Mandalorian’s eyes are sliding covetously over your body. The cool helmet is expressionless, but something in the still way he’s standing suggests you’re having the intended effect. He steps closer, heavy and deliberate, and you smile. Leaning in, he almost brushes his helmet against your cheek. He bends further and instead retrieves the blanket from the floor.

He straightens up and with deft movements, folds the blanket into an even square. You think at first that this is another expression of his military discipline, no loose items left lying around the ship, but when he spreads it on the deck in front of you and his hand motions you curtly forward, you realize he’s made a pad for your unprotected knees.

He reaches out and slides one gloved finger over your cheek as he steps around your side, unfurling a few arm-lengths of the cord as he goes. You can’t see him when he takes a position directly behind you, but his hands wrap over both your shoulders. You arch your back for him, trying to look tempting as he caresses down your arms and pulls them firmly behind your body. “Mandalorian training covered a lot of skills for improvising,” he tells you as he starts to bind up your arms with steady, snug rounds of cord. It’s smooth and cool and not at all unpleasant against your bare skin. “And I always thought these knots looked really… interesting.”

As if his words weren’t enough, the tone with which he says them definitely says you’ve discovered another one of his kinks. So you hold still and preen while the Mandalorian trusses you up to his satisfaction.

“Wiggle your fingers,” he says softly when he finishes with your arms, “too tight? Are you losing any feeling?”

You breathe deep and try to focus on his question, ignoring your spiraling arousal long enough to think about the practical. “No, it’s fine,” you conclude.

He hums a satisfied sound and wraps the next length of cord around your waist, twice. He lets his fingers trail and roam over your skin as he settles the binding where he wants it, waking up the nerves around your ribs and belly, even indulging himself in playing with your tits for a few breathless moments before getting back to work securing your limbs.

He ties your ankles too, after making certain you’re able to balance with your feet crossed. He leaves enough slack in the cord between your hands and feet to allow you to keep your hips straight and kneel up high, and when he steps around to the front of you, you realize why. In this position, your face is even with his belt as he stands before you. Looking straight down at you his head cocks to one side, then the other. His fingers trail over your chest, then your neck, almost absent-mindedly. He lifts your jaw to trace your face, clearly enjoying the way he can touch you while you can barely move. “I like you like this.”

You smile around the thumb that’s currently brushing across your lips. He uses the opportunity to press into the gap between your lips, and you stare up into his visor as you open your jaw and accept him in further, tasting the vaguely salty leather of his glove.

He takes a breath, as if he’s about to say something, but then just silently freezes. You wonder what he was thinking as he takes his hand away from your face. Whatever it was, you think it actually made him tremble.

“Say it,” you urge.

He freezes again, looms a little closer, and then just shakes his head. He runs his fingers through your hair, mussing it some as he keeps thinking. He grabs a handful and uses it to change the angle of your neck, pushing you back and forth, just because he can. He runs his other hand down your chest and closes it over your breast. “You just look so fucking good,” he says, voice bottoming out on the curse, and starts teasing at your nipple too distractingly for you to speak again.

You’re pretty sure he was thinking about something more than this, but damn, it’s easy to let that go when he’s taking advantage of your exposed, precarious position in such an overwhelming way. He’s crueler with your nipples than last time, and you can’t really squirm away from him without falling over. And he knows it. Heat shoots in an insistent line to your core with every pinch and tug, until your cunt is clenching at nothing and you’re pleading with him all over again. “Fuck, Mando. Please. I need to come.”

“Me first.”

His hands comes back to your face, grip more insistent, as needy as you’re feeling as he scoops up both your cheeks and pulls your face up so he can search your eyes.

His thumbs spread softly over your cheekbones, unexpectedly tender. “Did you say you would accept a blindfold?” He asks it like he thinks it’s a hard thing to agree to. Like he’s worried you were only joking before. You wonder again what the state of his sex life has been, before you, before this, this strange and wonderful thing that just sort of started _happening_ between you…

“Of course.” You press your face more firmly into his hands. “I trust you.”

The groan he answers you with sounds different from all the other ones you’ve gotten out of him today. He presses the tip of one thumb silently to your lips, then steps away to find something to use.

He comes back with a strip of white-ish fabric held out between his hands, draped across both palms. It’s a rag, really, probably something he’s saved to use as a bandage, and his posture is one of sheepish yet hopeful apology. “This is the best I could find.”

So he doesn’t take girls back to his ship often enough to have any sort of necessary fucking-a-strict-Mandalorian gear at the ready. That’s… sort of comforting. You tip your head up to him in response, and reassure him as simply as you can. “Thank you.”

Only as he’s wrapping it carefully across your eyes do you realize that putting this on you means that he will be taking something of his own off. How much skin is he planning to bare this time? You feel your whole self flush in anticipation; because even if you won’t be able to see it, you’re going to _feel it,_ somewhere on your arched and bound body.

The ship feels simultaneously louder and more silent when you lose your sight along with your ability to move. Time seems to stretch out. Nothing fills your perception but the Mandalorian; his movements, his presence, the snugness of the cords he’s bound you with, and the brush of his hands as he secures the blindfold at the back of your head. His fingers trace along the bottom edge of the cloth when he’s done, along your cheekbone and up to the bridge of your nose. His fingers. No glove anymore. When he traces them down over your lips you just have to reach out and try to catch one in your mouth, sucking the salt directly from his skin.

His breath hitches. You wonder just how sensitive his bare skin is, given the life he leads. He lets you have one finger, to suck deep into your mouth, to explore with your tongue and the inside of your cheek. The rest of his hand closes softly over your face as you pull him in as far as you can. It’s callused, but not rough. Hands that are worked hard but always insulated, protected. You lick your tongue out a little into his palm and he moans for you. Sensitive, indeed. You wonder if it will be the same when you get to his cock. But all men are sensitive there, are they not?

His finger dances along with your movements, respectful of its position as a guest inside your mouth, but still commanding the space. You almost don’t notice him getting down to his knees in front of you, until the clang of his armor against the deck draws your attention. His other glove is off too, you note as he takes you around the hip, steadying you and caressing in equal measure.

He draws his finger from your mouth slowly, playing with your bottom lip on the way out. The touch of it is absent from your perception for only a moment, though; he uses that fresh wetness to press suddenly between your lower lips, going directly for your clit this time.

Your moan sounds a lot like a whine; he’s got you revved fully up again in an instant. You lean into him as the little circles he’s rubbing start to make you feel weak. He still has all his armor on, which you realize when your breasts brush his cuirass just a moment before your head contacts the edge of his helmet. Does he like it that way? Would it just be too much for him to open up more of his skin to you?

He draws you to rest more of your weight against him, a welcome relief from the somewhat awkward balance you’ve been maintaining in this bondage. The cords wrapped around your middle tighten even as the pressure comes a little bit off your ankles and your hip muscles. A decent trade. The erotic discomfort only makes you feel more sensitive to his hands, one working your clit mercilessly while the other is now curving over your backside. He grunts in a pleasured little noise when he feels at the knots keeping your wrists tight against you back there, and you swear you can feel the sound vibrate through his chestplate where you’ve sagged against him.

“Do you like this?” he asks you.

“Yes,” you hum, pushing a lot of emotion into the one little word, and rubbing the side of your face into that angled beskar curve over his cheek. It’s a little strange, to snuggle the man’s helmet, but in the moment it feels right. It’s also the only affectionate movement possible, given your current predicament.

He presses two fingers inside you, deliberately and with very little preamble. You moan against him, pretty sure this is more teasing but determined to get the most out of it while it lasts. He did say that he was going to come first this time. But he presses on to find that wonderful, overwhelming g-spot inside of you, and curls his fingers against it until you are all but sobbing.

When your breathing starts to change he slows, and there’s no amount of wiggling that you can do to make him go faster again. “I did tell you—”

“Yeah, fuck,” you answer, “you first. I remember. Please.” Your throat’s fucking dry after all that panting, and you have to swallow before you can keep talking. “How can I help?”

You think maybe he laughs at your wry little tone; or maybe your voice is so blown out from being edged for what feels like kriffing _hours_ that the joke doesn’t come out so well as you think. He leans back, making you hold up your own weight on your knees again, and drags his slick fingers up your bound and straining body. “I seem to recall an offer to suck me so good, I’ll forget my own name. Or… a similar boast.”

“It was something like that,” you say, distracted from recalling your exact words from that final attempt to renegotiate the bounty split, because his phrasing makes you think of something else. “I better not try to be that good, because I wouldn’t be able to remind you. I don’t even know your name.”

“No,” the Mandalorian says as you hear him stand up and unzip his heavy trousers, “you don’t.”

Fuck if that doesn’t make this hotter, for how little you really know about this man to be at the forefront of your attention right before he sticks his big, fat dick in your mouth.

One of his hands starts roaming over your body again, paying particular attention to your outstretched tits, and the places where you’re bound tight in the cords. The other one is suspiciously absent. You imagine him stroking his own length with it, softly at first, fingers in a loose ring around that girth as he gets himself ready to abuse you with it. His size is going to be a challenge. But you’ve never been one to back down in the face of hardship before, when the goal is worth it. And convincing Mando to make you come again… that’s a prize worth fighting for.

The only warning you get is a soft grasp of his hand at the side of your face, his thumb tipping your cheekbone up as the rest of his fingers wrap under your ear. The next thing you feel is the blunt, velvety tip of him brushing against your lips.

“Open your mouth.”

You’re a little embarrassed he had to say it. You were just so lost in the moment, enjoying the feel of his head brushing across your lips like a kiss. Now you part them for him eagerly, tipping your head so he can watch your tongue curl out and lick around the edge of his head. He doesn’t press in closer, and you can only manage to suck around just the tip of his cock.

“Show me,” he says. His voice is tight and you know that you have him already, but he’s remaining resolute to whatever game he’s decided to play. “Show me how bad you want it.”

You strain your neck to get more of him, but he’s not working with you, and you gain maybe only an inch of smooth, thick shaft. You work your tongue around the ridge of his head, then start sucking strong enough that you can feel him shiver.

“I can see you, but I can’t hear you.”

It’s easy to moan for him, and you’re rewarded with another inch of his thickness in your mouth. You know by the steadiness of the angle that he’s got one hand wrapped around the base of himself, pointing it down for you, but your lips haven’t yet come near to hitting that grip. You try to push forward, to reassure yourself that he’s not too long for you, but even as his head is bumping into sensitive parts at the back of your mouth, you still don’t contact those fingers. Fuck, he’s big. And you can’t even spit into your own hands and use that shortcut to make him feel more enveloped. This job is all on your tiny little mouth, and how much you can manage to relax your throat.

Your next moan comes out sounding a little bit more desperate.

“Ung, do I love that sound,” Mando moans above you, his tone somewhere between appreciative and cruel. Bastard can’t seem to help being intimidating no matter what he’s doing.

Finally you give up on the suspense for yourself, and pop him out of your mouth in favor of running long licks down the sides of him. It’s sloppy, leaving your cheeks embarrassingly wet, but what else is there to do? You have to find the end of him.

You reach his hand with your tongue and it dances out of your way, allowing you to lick all the way to the hair curling around his base. He pushes you back a little when you try to get down to his balls, though, and presses his length into your cheek until you turn your head and accept him back into your open mouth. It was worth a try.

He groans above you when you close your lips around his tip and give him a swirl of your tongue. A strong, deep pull after that earns you more of those foreign-tongue curses. And when you take a deep breath and then try to pull him in even deeper…

“Are you gonna—” his head bumps the back of your throat and you keep pulling “—oh, yes—” your gag reflex tries to start and you swallow down against it, spasming your pharynx against the thick tip of him “—just like that, yes, fuck yes, you’re doing so good.”

His hips start to crowd you, but now you’re at the point where you can’t breathe and it’s harder to fight your body’s instincts. An ugly sound comes out of your throat and before you get as far as you wanted your upper body is flinching and trying to pull you away. Mando retreats and you try not to cough too loudly.

You don’t want to let him down. As soon as your reflexes relax you’re lifting your head to find his cock with your lips again. “Fuck,” Mando curses again as you drag him back in, and you can hear the reluctance fighting with the eagerness in his voice. “You don’t have to—”

You cut him off by sucking him hard and deep again, proving your determination even without the use of your voice, your eyes, or your hands.

The sounds you make as you keep struggling to take as much of him as you can aren’t the prettiest sounds in the world, but you can’t really help it anymore, and you just have to hope the whines and gulps aren’t ruining this for him as you all but choke yourself on his dick.

Mando’s hand comes to cup your cheek, the other one winding further around the back of your head, so soothing in contrast to the abuse you’re putting yourself through to do this for him. “So fucking good,” he murmurs. “Trying so hard for me. I love to hear how you’re trying.”

And those sweet words are the only thing that lets him get away with starting to push, in time with the bobbing of your head, and with wrapping his fingers a little tighter behind your skull and making it even harder for you to catch a break every time you need one. You have to believe that he even likes hearing you gag, when he’s driven you to it for the third time.

“Oh yes you sweet little—” a panting breath cuts off his thought, “and I thought fucking your pussy was good—” you gag and he groans in pleasure. His fingers tighten in your hair, though he gives you enough space to breathe. “Love how you take me so good, in both ends.”

You’re glad of the blindfold when you realize that tears have been leaking out of your eyes. You want to do this for him, to be his good girl, and you don’t want to make him feel guilty about the struggle. You still don’t want the best bounty hunter in the parsec to think that you’re weak.

“Doing so good for me,” he pants the next time you loosen your lips to gulp another frantic breath around him. And suddenly it hits you, that the sound has changed. His voice is… fuller, and more immediate. Has he taken his helmet off? Some instinct tells you not to call attention to it.

You can definitely hear his breathing more clearly now, and it’s hitching, coming faster and wilder, his body tensing in front of you. His thumb slides along your cheek and you just know that he's looking at you with his own eyes while you work so hard for him, know that that’s what made him tear his helmet off, that he wants to finish while drinking in the sight of this. His cock convulses inside your mouth, and you both make ragged sounds when he pulls himself abruptly out of you.

He’s already starting to spray before he’s left your lips, coating them with his first pump of warm salt. His pleasured groan fills the air and just goes on and on as he works himself through his release, his cum hitting your cheeks, your collarbone, and one shoulder. He finishes by dragging himself across your outthrust tits, making a thorough mess as he rubs his shuddering, finishing cock all over you; and you in your bondage just have to kneel there, exposed, and take it.

One hand is still scooped around the back of your neck. Mando comes down to one knee, steadying you and himself both by leaning his shoulder against yours. You think about how close his face is, and how it must still be bared. You realize you can feel his breath hitting your cheek. You listen to the sound of him pulling himself back together, and feel the movement of air, his air, against the sticky wetness he’s left all over your face and and upper body. You don’t say anything. Any remark that might come out of your smart mouth would only remind him of the distance he’s honor-bound to reassert between you, you’re sure of it.

You feel him shifting, though his one hand stays wrapped around your head, thumb softly stroking the corner of your jaw just in front of your ear. In your darkness and immobility, you try to imagine what’s coming next. Your nipples have gone hard, so hard, and your naked body, dripping with his fluids and your own, is aching to be touched, to be allowed to seek its own release too.

The Mandalorian lets go, leaving you alone in the dark. When he grasps your neck again, his glove is back on it. “Do—do you want to know what I was thinking, earlier, when you asked me?” His voice is gravelly from his orgasm and coldly modulated from the helmet again. You wonder if he even thinks you knew it was off.

You’re about to answer his question, but his other hand cups between your thighs, stroking insistently at your slit, and that one is still bare.

“I was thinking that I wanted to see you just like this, bound on your knees,” two fingers press into you, bold and deep, wasting no time now, “but also roughed up, and crying, covered in my cum.” He whips the blindfold off your head so he can watch your eyes as he finger-fucks up into you, fast and hard, with the heel of his hand grinding into your swollen and needy clit.

You blink under the cold lights of the ship and wonder if he can see the tears that he had, in fact, forced out of you earlier. His beskar face gives you no indication where his gaze might be focused.

His hand returns to the base of your skull, winding into the roots of your hair and controlling the angle of your head again. Still worried you might look down and see his bare hand fucking into you. It’s merciless now, giving you the intensity you had been begging for since he started touching you under the blanket, and then some. You realize he might be hoping to make you cry again, and as his deeply satisfying assault starts to overwhelm you, you realize that it’s working.

“Look at you, you filthy little thing. You’d let me do anything to you, wouldn’t you?”

Stripped, hogtied, covered in his cum and crying over his fingers, you really are in no position to argue with that particular accusation. Your body starts to tense at the very thought, blessed release finally blooming up over you at the _thought,_ just the _inkling_ of the idea that there might be even more filthy things than this that the Mandalorian might want to do to you. Stars, if he gets off on seeing you cry, then what else might he—

Your own orgasm cuts off any other thought, blinding you with a white-hot pleasure that arches your back and sends a shuddering scream through the walls of the _Razor Crest_ that they can probably even hear out in hyperspace. Mando guides you through it, working your body just right to keep the release stretching on and on until you’re sobbing, shuddering, and then he pulls you forward to rest against his armored bulk when you have nothing left to give him.

While you’re busy remembering how to be human, Mando’s arms wrap around you. He holds you up as you tremble and pant through your come-down. “So good,” he’s murmuring. “You did so good for me.”

He strokes your upper back, your arms where they’re tied behind you. He keeps you balanced into his shoulder while he works to get you out of the bondage. You sigh in relief when your feet are released, legs now able to angle out to a position that’s a little less work to keep you upright. You’re almost sad when the loops of cord around your waist let go, however; their snugness had felt like a constant hug supporting you throughout that delicious ordeal.

When your arms are freed, you realize through your swirling bliss how stiff your shoulders had become, an ache already setting in now. Mando seems to have anticipated this, as his hands come up immediately to rub them briskly, helping normal circulation resume. He catches himself in a sudden start, and keeps you held close to his body while he finds his other glove and covers his hand quickly behind your back.

“How do you feel?” He sounds calm again, but his tone is still warmer than you’re used to hearing from him.

You exhale slowly, taking inventory. “Sore,” you admit, then smile against his shoulder, “in all the right ways.” You lift your head from its rest against his pauldron, only to realize the cum left forgotten on your cheek has adhered you to it a bit. “And… filthy.”

“Maybe we should get you into the ‘fresher,” he suggests. “I’ve got enough water for you to take your time in there.”

Meaning he wouldn’t be joining you, as the men you’ve known from trysts like these often do. Another piece of intimacy sacrificed for his creed. Still, you think to yourself as your gaze winds over the angles that form his beskar face, from your position held tenderly in his arms, that doesn’t make this not worth it.

His fingers stroke up and down in front of your ear again. Maybe that’s the only clean part of your face. You give him a contented smile and lean back on your heels.

And promptly wince in pain; the sustained positioning of that bondage has definitely taken a toll on your muscles.

“Move slow,” Mando cautions, and helps steady you as you come stiffly up to your feet.

His hands don’t leave your body as you walk together over toward the ‘fresher. It almost feels like he’s loathe to separate too. Even though all his armor is back on. Even though the tiny measure of allowed physical contact is complete. You kind of assume that once you’re clean, and your clothes are back on, everything will be going back to normal between you two, but something in the grip of his fingers makes you question that.

When you step out of the most luxurious shower that a former troop transport ship can offer, your clothing is nowhere to be found.

“Feeling refreshed?” Mando asks, watching you in your tiny towel from where he’s seated at the little table that turns one portion of the hold into a galley.

“Very.” You look around pointedly. “Mando, where are my clothes?”

“I want to keep looking at you.” That’s all he has to say for himself. “Can you do that for me?”

You feel heat flushing through your body. Apparently both of you really are going to spend the rest of this flight just horny as fuck. You nod, and unwrap the towel from yourself slowly, wiping off the last bits of moisture but also hoping to give him a little show.

Mando sits back, splaying his arms out, getting comfortable.

You pass the towel over your hair one last time, wondering if you’ll be able to stay warm enough. Though it does feel like he might have adjusted the environmental controls while you were in the ‘fresher. The ambient air seems warmer. Or maybe that’s just your own blood heating up already.

“Now,” Mando says once you’ve set the towel aside, “I think you said something about cleaning the blasters.”

You shoot him a look. “You want me to disassemble and clean out the weapons… naked.”

He just nods.

It’s hard for you to even remember all of the details from the rest of your time in hyperspace; your brain was so overloaded with the best kinds of chemicals, the overwhelming pleasures and the intensity of the Mandalorian’s dominance and need to get everything he could from you; your sounds, the sight of your skin, the way it marked up when he was feeling cruel and plumped up firm and wanting when he played nice again. Every time you think you recall all of it, another memory hits your mind.

Climbing naked into his lap, having noticed a smudge on his helmet. Grasping the back of his neck to stabilize him as you polish the beskar, the way he leans into your touch like a happy pup. There’s something wonderful about having an excuse to give so much attention to the only parts of him you will ever get to see. His gloves encase your naked hips as you clean his armor diligently. “A guy could get used to this, don’t you think?” is what you want to say, but you don’t dare.

That brat instinct taking over your brain again. When he appears not to be paying attention, your naked leg reaches out long and high so your foot can slap him upside the helmet. His arm coming up, lightning fast, locking your leg and swinging you into a takedown on the floor that leaves that foot trapped up high on his shoulder, the rest of your body inescapably open to him. His hand under your jaw as he fucks you into the floor right there; the grip is gentler than the first time, only a token reminder, maybe for you, maybe for himself.

Jokes that hint there might be a next time, some continuation of these passions into tomorrow, but nothing too explicit. “What I need is one of those posture collars,” you say to him while arched into yet another creative sex position meant to keep your eyes away from his naked cock, “the kind those aristocratic ladies wear on Thespa. They can’t even turn their heads. Those things keep their chins so high they can barely swallow.”

Effortful, pleasure-filled grunting stops long enough for him to quip, “I’m not sure I like the sound of that last part.”

You're in the cockpit when the ship drops out of hyperdrive above Nevarro. You wanted to have him up here before the journey’s end, to fuck him right in his seat so he’ll think about you the next time he’s “meditating” during flight. It takes two orgasms and a concerted, well-lubricated effort to get him inside you one more time, your pussy so swollen and abused already that it’s a real fight to slide all the way down onto his length. But you want him there, one last time before you arrive at the planet. Before you have to go back to reality, and the complications of the bounty hunting profession.

Your last orgasm feels like it never quite finished, your walls clenching around the solid certainty of his cock buried deep inside, unable to give up their rhythmic spasming against that delicious resistance. The whole core of you _thrums_ like the string of an electroharp, in a note that can’t seem to figure out how to end.

From the tone of the Mandalorian’s groans and the way his hips are now still, you know that he came already too. His gloved hands are spread across your thighs, right where your guns are usually holstered, and they’re the only part of him you can see from where you sit arched on top of his lap, your butt pressing up against his stomach. And you try not to even look at those hands, so as not to make him think you’re sneaking a peek at the root of what’s buried between your thighs.

The stars have stopped streaking. A big gray rock of a planet fills the main viewport now, and you’ve never been less happy to see it. Even if the successful hunt is about to bring you a respectable payday. New lights flash all over the consoles, and all the sounds in the cockpit have changed. Time for the Mandalorian to bring his ship in for a landing.

You tense your muscles to rise up off him but Mando clutches at your waist, urging you not to move, not to withdraw your body from his yet. “No, stay.” You settle back down, holding his softening length inside yourself, even as he’s still whispering “Stay.”

You close your eyes, breathing in deeply and trying to hold on to as much of this moment as you can. Even when he’s not hard he fills you, and that sweet ache of a stretch is wonderful, still. He can’t see how soft your face goes, how weak he’s making you feel, so you let yourself feel it. The sweetness. The soothing comfort of being held from the inside. If only. If only it didn’t have to be over.

That whispered “stay” keeps ringing inside your head as Mando reaches carefully around and above you, flipping switches, punching codes, and programming the descent. From the way his hips roll along with the little movements, you know he’s loving still being inside you while he goes through this routine. But did that one word mean only this, his cock tucked snugly inside your warmth for as long as he could get away with it, or was he trying to say more? He never was much of a talker. Perhaps that simple word was the best he could do, to suggest what he wants from the future.

You shake your head a little at yourself. Call yourself a fool for imagining things. You’d spent nearly half a standard day having some of the hottest sex of your life, that should be enough. You’d always have the memories. You flex your core muscles, grabbing his thick cock a little with your pelvic floor, just to feel him, to remind yourself of the only thing that this was about. Good clean sexual satisfaction. Why bother it with feelings?

A subtle stretch, making you feel impossibly more filled, tells you you’re making him grow harder inside you. Just like that. It feels good but somehow even the pleasure annoys you, makes you feel restless.

There’s one blinking light that Mando’s been ignoring on the console. The screen says a message came in almost as soon as the _Crest_ came out of hyperspace. A message from Greef Karga.

Your sudden irritation compels you to swat at it, causing a little hologram of your boss to appear on the dash. If time is up, then let it be up.

The blueish-gray image lifts both its hands wide. “Mando! I trust that you have brought back my bounties swiftly and without complication, as you always do.” You smirk a little at the ‘without complication’ bit. But since your wild fucking has led to an even fifty-fifty decision on the split, you suppose that Mando really did ensure that your involvement has turned out not to be complicated. No, not complicated in the slightest. “I await your arrival eagerly at the cantina. Meet me there without delay. I have a special assignment for you. Only you.”

The message cuts out, hologram disappearing as quickly as it had arisen. Mando shifts uncomfortably beneath you. He has definitely gone soft.

So he’ll be leaving. Likely almost immediately. And definitely without you. “That’s alright,” you say quickly, trying to keep your voice from sounding as flattened-out as you feel on the inside, “I’ve already accepted a bodyguarding job.” Which is true. “Starts in a few cycles.” Which is less than true. “I’ll go with you to pick up the payment, but I’ve got a lot to do to get ready to fly halfway across the system. I’ll leave you with him so you can talk in private, straight away. No problem.”

You swear he makes a noise, somewhere in there as you babble out your excuses, something that might have signaled an argument, an attempt to not let you brush everything away, revert to professionalism. But nothing comes out of the Mandalorian underneath you but that one, single, half-assed attempt. When you’re done speaking, he doesn’t try again.

By noon the next day you’re slumped into a booth at the cantina, nursing your fourth spatchka. And definitely not pouting. Not daydreaming, not ruminating, not playing the flight on the _Razor Crest_ back in your head like a private porno film, and definitely not wondering under what circumstances you might run into Mando next. Just…killing time. Planning your next move. Yeah, that’s it.

You squint and blink when a tall drink of beskar climbs into the seat across from you. “That can’t be Mando,” you say, eyes flitting around the mostly-empty joint to check if anyone else is seeing this. Karga’s not yet at his table; in fact it’s too early for any of the regulars. They’re going to think you’re making this up.

The mask before you just tilts to the side.

“You don’t drink after jobs.”

He throws one arm up on the backrest. “I don’t drink.”

Your face screws up. “Really?”

“But someone once told me I should loosen up.” He looks around the patron-less cantina. “So this is how you spend your time.”

“No,” you say, “I just,” you look down into your drink, but there’s no excuse to be found there. So you opt to take another sip rather than finishing that sentence.

“I thought you said you’d be busy prepping for your next job.”

“And I thought you were on some secret assignment for Golden Boys only.” Guess Mando’s finding out right now that spatchka makes you petty.

He shakes his head a little at you. “Karga did give me a rather interesting assignment.” He leans his forearm on the table, fingers rubbing absently against each other. “That bodyguard job you mentioned. It taking you anywhere close to Honfa?”

You try to play it coy, though your heart just started beating twice as fast. “What would it mean to you if it did?”

Those fingers continue to circle each other. “Thinking I might need a little backup. Could be a security system I’m not confident I can handle.”

You blink at him, forcing yourself not to grin. “I thought he said the job was only for you.”

Mando leans back, both pauldrons lifting in an extended, elegant shrug. “If I want to hire a subcontractor, that’s my business.”

“SUB-contractor?” you shout, splashing a little of your drink as you straighten up in indignation. “I run again with you, Mando, I do it as an equal partner.”

He’s got to have a shit-eating grin spreading under that helmet. He just has to. “We’ll just have to settle this same as last time. We can negotiate the split on the way.”

**Author's Note:**

> The Mando in my head is just turning out to be really strict about body boundaries and what counts as a violation of The Way. Hope you all enjoyed this!


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